Refined structure of bony fish muscle myosin filaments from low-angle X-ray diffraction data

Application of X-ray diffraction methods to the elucidation of the arrangement of the myosin heads on myosin filaments in resting muscles is made simpler when the muscles themselves are well ordered in 3D. Bony fish muscle for the vertebrates and insect flight muscle for the invertebrates are the muscles of choice for this analysis. The rich, well-sampled, low-angle X-ray diffraction pattern from bony fish muscle has previously been modelled with an R-factor of 3.4% between observed and calculated transforms on the assumption that the two heads in one myosin molecule have the same shape. However, recent evidence from other kinds of analysis of other muscles has shown that this assumption may not be valid. There is evidence that the motor domain of one head in each pair may interact with the neck region of the second head. This possibility has been tested directly in the present analysis which extends the X-ray modelling of fish muscle myosin filaments by permitting independent shape changes of the two heads in one molecule. The new model, with a computed R-factor of 1.19% against 56 independent reflections, shows that in fish muscle also there is a marked asymmetry in the organisation of each head pair.